


Only Hate the Road When You're Missing Home

by jellybeanforest



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Breakup, Bucky Barnes Is a Good Bro, Bucky Barnes in Wakanda, Canon Divergence, Cap-Ironman Bingo, Friendship, Gen, Homesickness, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Pep Talk, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 02:43:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21219260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellybeanforest/pseuds/jellybeanforest
Summary: In the aftermath of Civil War, Steve visits Bucky on his goat farm.For the Cap-IronMan Bingo 2019 Round 2 – Homesickness.





	Only Hate the Road When You're Missing Home

**Author's Note:**

> A baby goat is called a kid. A mature male goat is called a buck or a billy.

Steve touches down the rogue Avengers' Quinjet on the outskirts of Wakanda. He exits bearing gifts: a six-pack in one hand and a bag of chaffhaye hefted over the opposite shoulder before approaching a humble hut made of mud brick and thatch to greet a one-armed man in traditional African dress.

“Hey Bucky,” Steve calls out to him. He drops the bag and holds out the beer to his friend. “It’s been a while. Brought some beers and that weird fermented alfalfa for the kids.”

“You’re about fifteen years ahead of schedule. It’s only been six months since you left to pick up a pack of smokes from the corner market, and the kids haven’t even developed an unhealthy level of resentment for you yet,” Bucky quips, embracing the other man who pats him on the back with his free hand. When they break apart, he indicates a couple stools. “Now, have a seat. Stay for a spell.”

“If you insist,” Steve replies, cracking open a beer each for himself and Bucky. It didn’t do anything for him anymore, but it was something they used to do, back when Steve could still get drunk.

They talk then, of old times and new events. Wanda and Vision are together and on the run. Clint and Scott turned themselves in, choosing house arrest with their families instead of a life of vigilantism in the aftermath of the Avengers’ split. Steve didn’t hold it against them; he understood the pull of family and would never begrudge them their individual priorities. And then there was Sam and Natasha, waiting for him back at their base, monitoring world events and choosing when to intervene. It kept Steve on the move, kept him busy so he didn’t have time to think about–

“You must have gotten him a real piece of crap phone, Stevie, stripped of almost all phone-related functions,” Bucky comments, taking a pull from his bottle.

_Tony._

He had become a point of contention between them, but not in the way Steve had anticipated.

“That phone is for emergency purposes only. It doesn’t need to surf the Internet,” Steve explains. “Has anyone told you about the Internet yet, by the way? You ask it a question, and it tells you the answer within seconds. So helpful.”

Bucky shrugs. “Well, I don’t know about all that, but most phones I know of are capable of accepting incoming calls.”

“…Glad to see your sense of humor has made a full recovery.”

“Just call him, Stevie.”

Steve sighs. _Not this again._ “I can’t, not when I kept such a big secret from him.”

“About how I killed his parents?” Bucky states flatly as he watches the condensation form, coalesce and fall down the sides of his beer.

“Bucky, we’ve been over this. That wasn’t you.”

“Wasn’t it?” he challenges him. “I have to say my memory is a bit spotty, but it sure looked like me on the tape.”

Steve considers his friend, the guilt he carries as heavy as the world atop Atlas’s shoulders. It was a responsibility they both shared. “…I should have gone after you in ’45,” he admits. “I brought you into the Commandoes. I should have at least tried to carry you out, to retrieve your body, then maybe–”

“Maybe nothing,” Bucky interjects harshly. “You would have never found me. My body could have washed out to sea for all you knew.”

Steve supposes he’s right about that one, still–

“I can’t call him, Buck. Tony doesn’t want to hear from me, and I don’t want to push, but maybe, when he’s ready–”

Bucky stares straight at him, quirking up a brow. “I don’t know your boyfriend all that well, but Stark doesn’t seem the type to make the first move.”

“But he did,” Steve says, smiling at the memory. It had been in a quiet lull after a successful mission, when Iron Man tended to be at his most manic and creative. Tony had come up to him, saying he needed Cap’s help on a little experiment, a slight demonstration. When Steve had agreed, Tony had leaned up into him, kissing him deeply while tacking a tracking device onto the back of his Captain America suit. The suit had zapped the foreign body causing it to fizzle, rendering it useless. Tony had smiled, declaring the experiment a success right before Steve had asked him out to dinner.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “It’s different when you’re having a fight, and you know it. You’re going to have to be the one to reach out first.”

“I did; I reached out,” Steve protests. “I told you I wrote him a letter–”

Bucky’s demeanor brightens. Steve knows better than to trust it. “A whole letter, you say? Well, that settles it. The ball’s in his court to make the emotionally-difficult decision to call and ask for you back. Using words spoken directly from the heart in real time,” he takes another swig. “Because you wrote him a letter.”

“Were you always such a jerk, or is this a recent development?”

“No, I’m completely serious. He should come crawling back to you,” Bucky declares. His sarcasm is not lost on Steve.

“It’s not… that’s not what I meant. I just said, if he needed us – needed me – for anything, anything at all, no matter what, I’ll be there.”

“Uh huh, because that’s completely different from what I said.”

“It is,” Steve insists.

“So, you’re saying he should come crawling back to you when he needs you, when his back is against the wall and he is out of options. Got it.”

“…‘Anything’ covers personal reasons. He doesn’t have to wait for it to be life-or-death.”

“Christ, Stevie; you’ve always been stubborn, but now you’re just splitting hairs,” Bucky’s face takes on a pensive quality. “This is Peggy all over again.”

“That was different.”

“You’re always waiting for the right time, and I get why. Rejection is hard. Asking for forgiveness is hard. But sometimes you have to make your own ‘right time,’ or before you know it, one or both of you is going to end up dead, and if it’s him, you’re going to wish you said something earlier while you still had time, right or not.”

Steve is silent, considering the other man's words before ultimately deflecting, “How’s goat-farming anyway? Never pegged a kid from Brooklyn as a shepherd.”

“It’s not half bad,” Bucky answers. “Calm. Peaceful. I had a dumb kid who somehow got himself stuck on the roof and refused to come down until I crawled up and got him myself. I named him Stevie.”

“…Hilarious.”

“It’s the speckled one over there,” he points to a goat with his good hand. “He’s grown now – more wise and mature, I suppose – so I guess that makes him a buck.” He cracks a smile.

“Ha,” Steve deadpans.

“Call him; I'm serious. I don’t want you to live with even more regrets than you already have.”

“Alright – alright, I will,” he finally relents. “…Jerk.”

“Punk.”

* * *

Steve stares at his burner phone, the number of the cell he had given Tony already queued up, waiting for him to press ‘Talk.’ His thumb hovers over the button before he tries counting to three and clicks it on two. It rings twice before the line is picked up to an ominous silence.

“Hey. It’s… um… It’s me,” Steve fumbles. Great. He’s already fucking this up.

“Steve?” Tony’s voice sounds tentative, disbelieving.

He wants to be cool, collected, but once Steve starts, he can’t seem to stop. “Yeah… I know you probably don’t want to talk to me right now, but I just had to tell you again because you deserve to hear it from me, if not in person than at least over the phone. I’m sorry, Tony. Not for the Sokovia Accords – I still stand by that – but I am sorry I didn’t tell you about your parents. I’m sorry how everything went down in Siberia.”

The line is so quiet, Steve has to check the screen to make sure it’s still connected.

It is.

“Still there?”

“Yeah… yeah, I’m here,” Tony finally replies.

“I’m just so sorry.”

“I heard you the first three times.”

_This was a mistake. _

“Right, so… if you ever need me, I’m going to keep this line open.” Steve sucks in a breath. He supposes that’s it. That’s all there is left to say. “Goodbye, Tony.”

“Wait. Steve.”

Steve pauses.

“I’m… I’ve missed you,” Tony says, his voice subdued.

“…I’ve missed you, too.”

“I keep having these dreams – bad dreams – and I think something’s coming. I don’t know if I can do this alone.”

“You’re not alone, Tony,” Steve settles down on his cot located aboard the Quinjet. His pillow is hard and lumpy, so he just cradles his head in the crook of his bent arm. “Now, tell me about these dreams.”


End file.
